


The Skeletons In Our Closets

by squimpwave



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half-Life, Half-Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: Angst, Depression, Gen, M/M, Not A Game AU, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Relationship(s), Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trans Character, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:08:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28586244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squimpwave/pseuds/squimpwave
Summary: A month after the Final Act's conclusion, Gordon Freeman is still seeing the remnants of something- somebody- he thought he killed. Meanwhile, Coomer has a secret that has to come to light on its own terms. And Tommy is Tommy.--Updates irregularly. Tags and summary will update as the story progresses (so I don't spoil anyone prematurely, or have issues if I decide to change my mind on plot). I have a plot in mind but please feel free to leave suggestions and/or tips in comments!
Relationships: Bubby/Dr. Coomer (Half-Life), Past Tommy Coolatta/Darnold
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	1. Where We Are Now

“So…” Gordon started awkwardly, trying to look anywhere other than the screen in front of him. “Who wants to go first?” 

It had been Tommy’s idea, that they should all get together at least once a week and, well, just _talk_. And it hadn’t been a bad idea. 

Well, in theory. And Gordon’s PhD was based in theory. Transferring the ideas into reality had never been his strong suit. Never had it been the strong suit of any member of the Science Team, really. Which may have been what made this whole endeavor so hard to realize. 

They hadn’t talked, all together, for about a month, after the Black Mesa debacle concluded in alien guts and death and trippy dimensions and a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese. They’d called each other on the phone, separately; exchanged emails; but they hadn’t all been in the same place at the same time. 

And now they were all living in different places entirely, the “severance money” (though they all knew the correct term was _hush_ money) enough to let them all pursue their dreams. 

Tommy had moved to northern California, and had gotten a job with special-needs children. Gordon really hadn’t thought him the type, honestly, considering his talent for shooting, but he understood. Tommy wasn’t much different from him, forced into combat situations by chance and horrible luck, and he supposed that the man had wanted to forget that part of his life entirely. He felt the same. Out of all of them, Tommy felt the closest to him, and by far he was the one Gordon had phoned the most after they’d all split up. 

Coomer had gone to Florida, for the sole reason of “Anything’s legal _there_ , Gordon!”. He’d recently gleefully posted a screenshot of a local news article titled _Florida Man Challenges Alligator To Boxing Match, Wins,_ to their group chat. He’d also taken it upon himself to rob a bank, though he hadn’t yet. But Gordon was horribly sure the day would be soon. 

Bubby had stayed south too, some odd part of his personality (Gordon couldn’t understand for any other reason than masochism) liking the intense heat of New Mexico and Texas. But apparently he wasn’t staying there- he’d visited Coomer multiple times. His most recent plot was to join NASA as an astronaut and see space for himself. Gordon really didn’t want to shoot down the man’s dreams, but he just couldn’t see it happening. Well, unless Bubby intimidated the entirety of NASA into letting him train as an astronaut. Which… he really didn’t want to think about how _possible_ that sounded.

And Gordon himself, well, he’d moved back to the East Coast, taking up residence in a small Massachusetts town, about a half-hour drive from his old stomping ground of MIT. He hadn’t been able to hold a job down, however. He’d begun to suspect, and Tommy had confirmed, that he’d gotten PTSD from their experience in Black Mesa. But he couldn’t get a therapist. How would he be able to explain _anything_ without breaking the oath of silence the G-Man had set him up with? Or, well, getting sent to jail. But the thought seemed absurd to him. Jail was nothing compared to the hell on earth he’d been through already. 

“I-if nobody else wants to,” Tommy spoke up, in his faltering, about-to-cry tone. “Uhhmmm… Sunkist wants to- to say hi!” 

A quarter of the screen in front of him was filled by a perfect golden ball of fur, and the tension across the room tried to lift as a perfect bark rang out through Gordon’s speakers. 

“Y-yeah, hi, Sunkist,” Gordon said, smiling hesitantly and waving into the camera. Bubby and Coomer nodded their assents. 

“How have you been, Tommy?” asked Dr. Coomer. 

His mechanical yet human voice broke the awkward silence, and Tommy happily- well, as happily as he _could_ convey, given his weeping voice- recounted his past week of working with autistic and other such neurodivergent children. They _loved_ Sunkist, he made sure to mention multiple times throughout the retelling of his week. And the older ones loved his talks about OSHA guidelines. 

Bubby and Coomer had similarly humdrum lives to talk about. Bubby hadn’t gotten the job at NASA he’d wanted, so he was crashing at Coomer’s place for the week. They both seemed rather excited about the prospect. Well, why _wouldn’t_ they be- Coomer was divorced, so he was probably pretty lonely, and seeing as Bubby was a quite literal test tube baby, the guy had probably never experienced a sleepover himself. 

When asked about his last week, and his plans for the next, Coomer simply winked. “It’s a secret, Gordon!” he grinned. Bubby opened his mouth, but Coomer quickly clapped a hand over it. The only word Gordon could make out from the man’s garbled speech was _bank_. 

Oh, _great_. And there went this month’s bills. He’d have to bail the two of them from jail. 

“H-how about you, Mister Freeman?” Tommy asked politely, once the raucous laughter from Bubby’s mumbled confession had died down. 

“Oh, I…” He let himself trail off, going into a placid sort of thoughtfulness. He leaned back in his chair, allowing the webcam’s view to pan out across his rather desolate apartment. Clothes were strewn all over the floor; Gordon had never been a tidy person at the _best_ of times, and now he just never felt the energy to pick them up. Ratty posters of old video games and bad movies adorned his walls, but they did nothing to make the place seem any more alive. He supposed it was better than having the crumbling drywall on display, though. 

“It’s not going well,” he admitted. “She’s probably gonna… divorce me, honestly.” 

The team murmured in subdued tones. He’d tried to keep his marital issues on the down-low, especially when talking to a group that had no real experience with that type of situation. Plus, there’d never really been enough time to have a chat. They were all too busy fighting off death itself. He’d thought of talking to Coomer, but the doctor had seemed pretty hyped about his now-ex-wife leaving him whenever he’d talked about it. 

“She says I’m too unreliable, and I can’t be trusted. Especially with someone like Josh. He’s only _five_.” He sighed, putting his head in his hands. “Honestly? I think she’s right.”

“Aww, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy wailed sympathetically, as Coomer nodded with a heartfelt gaze. 

“Why do you think that, Gordon?” It was an actual question that came from Bubby- no snide nor sarcastic remarks this time. Bubby wasn’t trying to joke around, he probably genuinely _didn’t_ see why Gordon was any less of a capable parent than any other person. 

Gordon wished he had that dumb, blind optimism for himself. 

“I get scared,” he muttered, biting his lip on and off. It was a vulnerable side of himself that he was exposing to them now, but he felt it was really for the better. After all, he’d trusted them with his life on multiple occasions. And while that hadn’t worked out for them all the time, they’d all made it out of there in one piece.

_Mostly_ one piece, he reminded himself as the phantom pain in his forearm clocked in for its daily shift. Nothing crippling, just a dull ache where his hand had been sawed off. He wore a wrist brace now; it had the same effect on his mental state, and was easier to explain, than having a medical bandage constantly wrapped around the area. His hand had been reattached by G-Man or some other higher power, but the scar remained, both physically and mentally. 

“I get scared,” he repeated, stuck in a limbo- trying not to lose the attention vested in him, but unwilling to continue. “Loud noises, the dark- hell, _dogs_ even.” He laughed helplessly before continuing, a laugh that was all too common in Black Mesa’s darkest moments returning to him now. “I-if someone says the word “puppies”, it’s… I get…”

He didn’t want to finish the sentence. And truly, no words in his vocabulary _could_ finish it. The all-consuming fear that encompassed him, the tunnel vision as he was taken back to Black Mesa and the life-or-death situations that never let up for even a moment’s rest. Nothing could even _begin_ to describe the terror he felt when it happened. 

He envied the rest of the Science Team. Bubby was as human as test tube babies got, but he failed to grasp basic feelings, such as fear, or remorse for his actions. Coomer was, well, _Coomer_. And Tommy, bless the man, was the direct descendant of an interdimensional god. None of them could feel the same way Gordon felt. 

And just as he expected, the looks on their faces were those of sympathy but not empathy. While they did feel _bad_ for him, they had no idea what he was going through. 

They sat there for a few minutes in silence.

“Are you okay, Doctor Coomer?” asked Tommy abruptly, in his typical fashion. “Your voice is weird.” 

“Oh. I. _Ahem._ ”

Coomer coughed purposefully, and his voice returned to the quality of gruffness that Gordon remembered. Gordon hadn’t picked up too much on whatever Tommy had caught Coomer out for, but there was definitely a change from the doctor’s previous tone. 

“Mind your own fucking business, Tommy,” responded Bubby before Coomer could say anything. Gordon hid a smile behind his hand as Tommy’s aghast expression met the rest of the Science Team. While he would in no circumstance call Black Mesa the “good old days”, there was an air of closeness that had wrapped the four men together back then, bonded them into one group. And it was back now in this moment, if only fleetingly. 

They talked for a few more minutes. Coomer’s voice did slip now and again, and Gordon did notice now that he was looking out for it- but for the life of him, he couldn’t actually figure out what was wrong. He wondered if anything bad was happening to the scientist. Throat cancer, perhaps? It felt morbid to think about. And it felt wrong, too; for all Coomer had survived, Gordon would hardly expect him to go down to such a… _common_ threat. 

Maybe he was overthinking it.

He probably was. 

Eventually, the talk dried up. With no topics left to discuss, the four parted ways, with a “See you all next week!” from Tommy before the connection closed. 

Gordon sighed, slowly and reluctantly closing the lid of his laptop. But the warmth had already dissipated; it was no use trying to cling to the shadows that had already departed.

Even more unwillingly, he turned around in his seat. His eyes wandered to the closet door, which was cracked open. 

His overhead light wasn’t on, nor was any lamp, but through the grimy window, a single ray of the six-thirty setting sun, as if by fate, had pierced through the dark apartment. 

Illuminating a certain dusty white skull. 

Gordon Freeman groaned helplessly. 

_It was all in his head,_ he reminded himself. 

But did that make it any better?

* * *

“You’re going to have to tell them some day.”

Bubby looked at Coomer with an uncharacteristically kind gaze, smiling softly. The connection to Gordon and Tommy had closed, and the subtle afternoon light now filtered through the blinds of Coomer’s single-story Floridian home. A sluggish breeze, having entered through the back screen door, kicked up a few motes of dust, which sparkled momentarily before disappearing back into shadow. 

“I know,” the other doctor sighed. “But it- Hello, Doctor Bu-it’s hard.” 

Clapping Coomer on the back, Bubby pulled the other into an embrace. “You told me. I think the hard part is over.” 

They stayed wrapped together for the better part of a minute in silence before Coomer pulled away. Bubby patted his partner’s shoulder. 

“Gordon exposed a very vulnerable side to us today. I think it would be acceptable if you reciprocated.” While by no means he liked the man- barely found him tolerable, in fact- Bubby found Freeman brave for being open and upfront about his struggles to the rest of the Science Team. 

“ _It’s okay,_ ” he wanted to reassure the other doctor. They had endured. They _would_ endure, Freeman and Tommy be damned if they had anything contrary to say. 

But something inside of him was stopping him from telling Coomer that.

_Bubby couldn’t guarantee Coomer’s safety. He couldn’t save anyone other than himself when it came down to it. It was why he’d allied with Benrey, with the military, back in Black Mesa. Though he hated the bootboys, they, at the moment, had been the safest chance for Coomer’s survival._

_Bubby didn’t trust himself to protect those he loved._

_And rightfully so,_ he thought. 

Tears had beaded in Bubby’s eyes at the memories, and as he recalled the trauma of Black Mesa- his entire life thus far- he had moved outside, sitting on the front porch steps and lighting a cigarette. Taking a small puff, he blew a thin wisp of smoke at the still-emerging dim stars, the lights of the city across the bay that was now host to the sunset. Silhouetted against fiery fuschias and blood-red and mandarin, the black shapes of buildings seemed to dance as distant lights flickered on and off. 

He took another drag of his cigarette, inhaling the noxious vapors deeper this time. Below the horizon, now, the sun’s parting rays had departed the sky, deep navy pervading the once-cerulean canvas. 

Lost in thought, he hadn’t even noticed the door swing open-shut, nor heard Coomer walk up behind him, until the other coughed on the smoke swirling around Bubby. 

Coomer had brought out two glasses with a translucent yellow-green liquid, each with a pink umbrella in, and wordlessly handed one to Bubby. He accepted it, equally silently, and crushed his cigarette on the railing next to him before taking a sip of the drink. 

“It will be all right, Doctor Bubby,” murmured Coomer, sitting down next to him. 

He started in surprise. _Bubby_ was supposed to be the one comforting _Coomer_ , helping Coomer get through this all- not the other way around. 

But as Coomer leaned into him, and they nestled shoulder-to-shoulder and then closer, Bubby began to realize that maybe, just maybe, both could be true. 


	2. Where We Don't Want To Be

It was cold. 

Benrey didn’t like the cold. 

_Cold_ meant _unfamiliar_. _Cold_ was the first thing he’d ever felt when he’d been brought to Black Mesa. The feeling never went away, not in the ten or fifteen years he’d been there, and he always got a prickly chill thinking too hard about it all. 

_Cold_ was the feeling he got when he was alone, and Benrey really didn’t like to be alone. Alone was vulnerable, and to a being quite literally the top of his food chain, vulnerability was possibly the most alien of emotions to him. Vulnerability terrified Benrey like nothing else ever could. 

_Cold_ could also mean _too-far-from-home_. _Home_ was warm and wet, like the tropics or a jungle, albeit a jungle made of flesh and cartilage. Home was nice, it was safe, it was not cold.

_Cold_ was the feeling of a suited man who only existed in shades of gray. 

_Cold could mean a myriad of unfortunate things_ , mused Benrey, his consciousness floating through an icy void. The darkness around him was crystalline, obsidian; if he pushed against it, it would shatter, and splinters of nothingness would slice through his mind and cut him open and spill out every last drop of his being. 

He closed his eyes and opened them again, but those statements meant nothing now. He could imagine the slits all over his body blinking, revealing sclerae every shade of an autumn leaf and vertical pupils the colour of pitch. But though he could think about it, he was in this moment an incorporeal form, blind to the darkness that cradled him. 

* * *

The suited man who only existed in shades of gray had erred in his judgement that Gordon Freeman could never kill Benrey for good. 

It was a nice concept, a calming thought. But it would never have truly worked out. Benrey was just too strong of a being. 

No matter how much he tried, _anyone_ tried, the blasted creature would just come back. A minute, a day- the longest that he’d recorded had been four days, an hour and thirty-three minutes- Benrey had returned to the plane of reality- or at least, that specific one of which the suited man’s job was to oversee. 

Footsteps which made less sound than they should paced through empty halls thousands of feet below the earth. The Resonance Cascade had been more… _explosive_ than he had planned, and every minute or so would come with another light panel that was dangling from the ceiling, another darkened beam. But this did not concern the suited man. 

A certain room lay at the end of this sloped hallway, lit with the same white neons that covered the mile-long passage that proceeded deeper and deeper into the earth, below the lowest reaches of what was left of Black Mesa. The man in the suit had long left the facilities which most people, even top-level employees, had known of. 

Of course, the man could have quickened the journey considerably, could have slipped between the cracks of the reality which grew ever wider as he descended. But this was not a destination that the man wished to see. Though none but himself would ever know, his footsteps had grown considerably more forced. 

He hoped against all hope that he was wrong. That Gordon Freeman had managed to dispose of the unruly creature. It had been a month, after all.

But he was an aged being, and he had long since left the childish ideals of “hope” and “fear” behind him. He’d packaged them away, sent them off, and left them to fester alone. 

In time, that part of his consciousness had come back to him, drawn back together after thirty-seven years. But it had developed on its own, and the man was sure that it would never be part of him again. 

He looked at the situation again, now coming only from a place of logic. Benrey was dead, but not for good. It was his job to eliminate the creature, and his most recent plan of doing so had failed. 

It had all gone so well. The Resonance Cascade had been triggered, and thus set off the chain of events culminating in Benrey’s “demise” at the homeworld of Xen. 

But the creature, despite being under his control for the most part, had hidden away a fail-safe. One of his idiotic _passports_. 

And if even one of the passports existed in this world, Benrey would come back. 

The suited man who only existed in shades of gray continued to walk down the hallway. At the end, an empty room beckoned. 

But the man knew that it would not be empty for very long. 

* * *

…It was taking him longer than usual to return. 

Floating through the void, Benrey laid limp in the cold again. It felt like snow, if he had ever felt snow- thousands upon thousands of tiny pieces of ice pricking into his skin. Never hard enough to draw blood, of course, unless he slipped and fell- but always there, an ever-present reminder of the unfamiliar, unfriendly world he was in. 

He knew he was not welcome. It was why he made it his priority to leave, leave quickly, and to hope that he would not return soon. 

To be in this world denoted failure. It meant that he had died. 

He focused on that thought, trying to remember how exactly it had happened. Usually, his memories were distant for a while before he came back, separate from his consciousness by a cold, ungiving wall. And he always tended to avoid the cold. By the time he’d worked up the courage to touch them, he’d already be in the world of the living again, and up to speed in a matter of moments. 

But this time felt different. He was getting worried, now- it was taking him too long to come back. How long had it even been? He didn’t know, he couldn’t know. It felt like years had passed while he was outside of time itself. 

Had Benrey his lungs, he would have taken a deep breath to steady himself. But as it remained, he was nothing. So he couldn’t. 

That was okay, he reminded himself, though it clearly wasn’t. But he had to be strong for himself. He was all he had. 

It was okay, because he’d always come back. He _had_ to come back. It was a constant of life. Two plus two would always equal four. The day would always give way to night. And Benrey would always return. 

With that in mind, he reached out for his memories. The void could scratch him, and he could bleed, and that was all right. He just had to know what had happened to him.

He was met with a barrier, and it was cold, and he would have drawn back normally- but now was not a normal time. So he pushed out against it, his consciousness like waves assailing the last levy before the flood. 

But it would not give. Benrey was not pushing at it with all his might. 

Because he was scared. 

He wasn’t back already. He was taking too long. And what if that meant he was _dead_? 

What if he _wouldn’t_ come back?

His consciousness shook, it shivered, drawing back into itself, hiding away from the cold and the unfamiliar. 

He was scared that he was dead, dead _forever_. No respawns. Hardcore mode. 

And the only way to give himself the benefit of the doubt- the only way he could hold on to a shred of hope that he _wasn’t_ dead- was to never confirm nor deny the fact in the first place. 

All he could do was to wait. To wait and hope that in time outside time, he would eventually return. 

The other option was too terrifying to think about.

* * *

The suited man paused as he stood outside the room. The door was locked; the windows, nonexistent. It was practically a metal box, containing something the man was loath to acknowledge. 

He had half a mind to abandon his duty, to let the being manifest a hundred thousand feet below the earth and _leave_ it there, but that would be dereliction of the worst kind. It was his job, after all, to be the protector of his realm, of sorts. 

So he sighed, as he was oft to do, and he closed his eyes and slipped between the cracks of reality. 

Inside the room was a chair, metal cuffs on its armrests and legs. The chair itself was devoid of anything human. Strapped to the seat, however, was a severed pair of legs clothed in a tattered security guard’s uniform.

The suited man’s _experiments_ had long since discovered that Benrey preferred to remanifest himself to the most complete part of his previous body. The more incomplete the body, the longer the revival would take. 

These legs had been taken from the time Benrey had been bisected by a closing blast door. At the time, he had returned to the upper half; it hadn’t been a fifty-fifty split, rather a sixty-forty, and the legs were the forty percent in question. So he had gone back by means of the torso, and as the rest of Benrey’s “deaths” had been remarkably whole in body, the legs had been left untouched for the rest of the timeframe that had encompassed the fallout of the Resonance Cascade. 

The suited man had collected pieces of Benrey’s mutilated corpses for a case such as this, as he had had the sneaking suspicion that Benrey would not die so easily. And he had been right. Unfortunate though it had turned out that he had lived, it did pay to be prepared. 

Now all that was left to do was wait. 

* * *

After an eternity and a minute, the void spat out Benrey like a particularly distasteful piece of cartilage, expelling him from the nothingness with which he had just reacquainted himself. Relief flooded over him. Of course he hadn’t died. Of course he would have come back. Any other concept was laughable. 

He groaned, shaking his head slowly, trying to get used to having a corporeal form again. 

His neck felt stiff and cold, and he attempted to reach his hand up towards that, but something was wrong. His hand wouldn’t move, he could feel the muscles tensing within himself but they didn’t _work._

_Don’t panic_ , he reminded himself, attempting to stabilize his breathing manually. It had taken him longer than usual to reaffirm himself as a being of the material plane, so obviously it would take longer than usual for his body to respond to his commands again. He was pretty sure that that was how nerves worked, at least. _Yeah, that made sense._

After about a minute, he began to feel things again. He could feel a chair he was sitting on, he could feel the rough material of the guard outfit cloaking his legs. An unruly mass of scruffy hair sprouted from his head, tickling at his shoulders. He’d have to buzz it later, to get it to fit under his helmet. 

This was familiar. This was normal. This was good. 

But something else encompassed him all at once, startling him alert. The room surrounding him was cold, unnaturally so.

And, as he opened his eyes, it was _bright_. Not the bright of day that had greeted him when he’d slipped up to the surface once or twice- no, this was an artificial light, the fluorescent neon of certain parts of Black Mesa. 

Benrey’s stomach dropped as a single memory flooded back. The cold and the bright lights together could only mean one thing. 

And sure enough, as Benrey unwillingly opened an eye the colour of burnt honey, he was greeted with the icy sneer of a suited man who only existed in shades of gray. 

* * *

“ _Ben, rey_.” The name was long, drawn out. The man preferred it this way; it gave him a feeling of power. Any encounter with him was conducted on his own time, his own schedule. 

The creature in front of him hissed, its arms, legs, and neck bound to the chair. 

“As, you can see,” he spoke, pausing whenever he felt would most disturb the other. “I have taken, some _liberties,_ with you.” He smiled placidly with lidded eyes, knowing that Benrey would pick up on the irony of his statement. 

Benrey growled, testing his restraints. The man had made sure that the metal binding him was sharp- it would dig into him at every move. And sure enough, an ugly blackish blue, the colour of a fresh bruise, had already begun to ooze from where the cuffs met Benrey’s straining wrists. 

Sure enough, in less than a minute he gave up. 

“Are you, _done_ , yet?” Smiling cruelly, the suited man twisted the knife, rubbed salt in the wound. The four words set off a fresh round of struggling, but it was half-hearted this time. 

The suited man enjoyed this most of all. Breaking spirit rather than body was his specialty, and he had not gotten to exercise his talent in too long. 

“...bbbvvvvv…” groaned Benrey. Two or three blue orbs escaped his mouth as he opened it, looking at the man as he vocalized his distaste. “Ff… ffuckin’ sp- spawncamper.” 

Benrey’s expression, usually blank, dry, smug, or a combination of those, was indignant on the surface, as if he was trying to play this off as a minor inconvenience. But probing further, looking into his eyes, the man found a glimpse of fear.

“It has been,” he paused again, “long, enough, _Benrey_.” He licked his lips. “I believe it is time, for you, to… _reacquaint_ yourself, with, me.” 

Stepping forward, he took a small metal chip from the breast pocket of his suit. Benrey’s eyes widened in recognition, and the struggles began anew. Now was the fight or flight response; true, animalistic fear manifested itself in Benrey’s eyes and he made no attempt to hide it. Orbs spewed out of Benrey’s mouth vehemently, all the colours of the rainbow and then some, in a last stab at preventing the man from approaching.

But he existed in only shades of gray, and as the orbs touched him, they wilted, their colours seeping from this world and fading to gray themselves. 

A rough hand grabbed a mat of Benrey’s hair, pulling his head upright, forcing him to look into the face of the suited man. The fear only grew, filling eyes that flashed all colours of autumn leaves. 

With his other hand, he pushed the metal chip into Benrey’s forehead, stepping back quickly to rid his hands of the disgusting being as soon as he could. Jet-black pupils rolled into their sockets, and the body fell limp. 

Satisfied, the man turned on his heel and began making his way back to the surface. 

Footsteps that made less sound than they should have echoed through the miles-long hall. His work for today was done; he would return in some days, after the passport was found and destroyed, and he could finally dispose of Benrey for ever. 

* * *

Unbeknownst to anyone, a single dark blue bubble eased its way out of Benrey’s mouth and slipped away.


	3. Restless Bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gordon Freeman did not have medical insurance.  
> And even if he did, even if he’d kept Black Mesa’s employee benefits (if the company hadn’t laid him off), he was pretty sure that the standard B-grade stuff guaranteed by a contract and paid for by a cut of his income tax didn’t cover psychotherapy.  
> What even was this?

Gordon shuddered, huddling tighter under the ratty blanket that protected him from the outside world. Sometime after the call had ended, the sun had gone down, and he’d neglected to turn on the overhead light. 

Not that it mattered, really. Just as well that he didn’t run up the energy bills. 

So there he lay, head propped up on the armrest of a couch in the middle of the room, illuminated by a single lamp on the table on the other end of the sofa. A younger Gordon, the absolute center of any and every frat party, would laugh at himself now. _Alone on a Friday night? What happened to you?_

Although he didn’t even know what day it was. The only thing he’d written down was a digital reminder, for the twenty-third of the month, so he would get up before noon and make himself presentable for the call. 

He tapped his phone awake. 

_Thursday._

Not much better, really. 

His whole life had fallen out of routine when he’d gotten back from Black Mesa. It started slowly, him taking some time to “detach”. Rest and recover, as one did. 

The first thing he’d done was to move to Massachusetts. He’d made a deal with Josh’s mother, that the kid would stay in New Mexico with her. She’d nodded, told him to take as much time as he needed. That she’d be waiting for him when he was ready.

But he could see a hollowness in her eyes. Gordon had gotten remarkably good at reading people, now, after he’d talked to so many soldiers and scientists who were trained to wear poker faces. He’d read an emptiness and a hopelessness and a despair. 

He was glad that she hadn’t asked Gordon if he wanted to visit every so often. It made the whole ordeal much less painful. 

So he’d moved up north to recuperate, in some stupid false hope that he could get better. Forget about his problems, at the very least. But very quickly, he’d realized that he wouldn’t just be able to fit into a normal life. 

Applications for jobs had always been hard, and in today’s economy, a washed-up burned-out twenty-eight-year-old scared of the dark stood no chance against the hordes of freshly minted adults, straight out of college, ready to accept any amount of pay to relieve their debts in the slightest. 

So he’d given up on that. But that didn’t mean anything, right? That was natural. He didn’t _need_ money, he’d paid off all his college debts at least a year before the Resonance Cascade with Black Mesa’s well-paying career, and the house he’d bought was small; two-fifty grand, which he didn’t- couldn’t, really- object to. Still left him enough to live a comfortable enough life.

About a week after he moved in, he stopped unpacking things from boxes. He’d gotten the bare minimum to live, and it was just a bit too much work. It would be stupid of him to take out things from boxes that would just end up cluttering up the room. 

And a week after that, he supposed it was, he stopped going outside for anything other than groceries. He didn’t need to get fresh air, really, and all the neighbors looked at him funny when he did emerge- so why make any more appearances than he had to? 

And eventually, he stopped going outside for groceries, too. The fresh stuff- milk, produce, meat- got spoiled after a week without him using the fridge, even faster if he didn’t even have the energy to put them away in the first place. He didn’t need breakfast if he woke up after noon, and he could subside on a constant diet of takeout, and leftovers from said takeout, for every lunch and dinner. 

The blinds were slatted shut constantly, his door locked. He had developed an aversion to natural sunlight. The windows were kept unclean on purpose, to dim the few rays that managed to make their ways in. 

At one point, he’d stopped counting the days. Time had no meaning for a man who adhered to no schedules. 

What had _happened_ to him?

If he tried to blame it on something- _could_ he? The dark little voice in his head told him that it was all his fault. He was the one who did this. He’d dug his own grave. He was lying in it right now. And he wasn’t getting out. 

His wife- soon to be ex-wife, he reminded himself- was right. He couldn’t take care of _himself_ , much less a five-year-old child. 

Gordon _Fail_ man, as a certain someone would have put it. He shook his head to dispel that thought. Dead men- dead _aliens_ \- could not criticize him on how he led his life. He had one up on that passport-obsessed fucker, Gordon was still _alive_. Screw him.

He curled up tighter on the couch, pulling the blanket over himself further. But he was a big guy, and as it bunched up around his fists, it slipped over his feet and up his shins, the chill of the room quickly settling in and standing his leg hair up in goosebumps. 

Born and raised in Massachusetts, the cold really shouldn’t have been a big deal. But he’d spent the past few years in New Mexico, and had only been back for five weeks. And what was it now- November? December? Whatever the month was, the winter was finally setting in, and Gordon was reminded of why he’d moved south in the first place. 

He groaned. He’d have to turn on the heater. Had the house even come with one? He didn’t remember. Probably hadn’t, the place had been pretty cheap as houses went after all. 

But he looked, and luckily for him there was a radiator over there, right next to the closet door. At the very least, he could turn the knob, see if it did anything.

Wait.

 _Right next to the closet door._

What was it with that thing? Why did it have to do this to him?

Why did it torture Gordon like this? _What had he done to deserve this?!_

A soft, childish whine seeped out of him. It wasn’t _fair._

* * *

He didn’t need to announce his presence, he thought, as the key turned in the lock with the satisfying _chk-clik_ of mechanisms working together. He was the suited man, after all- anyone worth their breath should know who he was, what he stood for, the second he walked into a room. 

But at the same time, there was a warring need. A conflict of interest, say. And yes, while his pride took the helm most of the time, and he would never have done so in the past… 

He steeled himself, inhaling in preparation as he crossed the threshold into the house. And he spoke words that, a year ago, he would never have found himself uttering. 

“I’m, _home_.” 

A different kind of pride swelled up in him now. Not the sort that he was used to, not the sort that made him the suited man. _But its difference was not a bad thing_ , he thought, as he allowed himself to smile. Not the dry, sarcastic smile he would give an underling at work, nor one of malice that he would give the distasteful creature known as Benrey. But a true, honest smile, that at this moment, genuinely reflected how he felt. 

A bark rang out, and he was startled out of his reverie as a large golden retriever bounded around the corner, dashing down the hallway towards him. Just before it tackled him, an action that would have knocked the man over completely, it skidded to a halt, nails clacking on the hardwood floor, and turned expectantly towards where it came from. 

“S-sorry!” squealed a completely repentant voice, its owner rushing around the corner after the dog a few seconds later. “You- you know how Sunkist, how Sunkist gets when she’s excited,” he stammered, his tongue tripping over itself as he saw the man that had entered the house. 

But in what must have been a complete surprise to him, the suited man was not pressed up against the wall in contempt, nor was he edging himself around the dog in order to get away. Instead, he was standing still, and while the tension in his body was obvious, he was _smiling._

“Hello, Tommy,” the suited man murmured haltingly. 

“H-hi, Dad,” responded the other in a similarly apprehensive fashion. He shifted his feet, looking down at the floor and the dog between the two. 

The suited man turned his gaze away too, settling his eyes on a framed photo on the wall. The picture itself was simple, depicting a sailboat at sunset, silhouetted against the cloud-free horizon. While it wasn’t connected to either of the two’s lives, being a stock photo that the suited man had downloaded off the internet (he had forgotten to crop it, and the _Alamy_ watermark in the corner irked him so much he had put tape over it), it reminded him of the things that he had missed. The things that could have been. 

Not for the first time, the suited man felt a yearning. So caught up in his work he had been for the past thirty-seven years, he had neglected any and all things of his own- _including his very own son_. 

It- Tommy- was still a concept he was getting used to. He knew that cutting parts of his consciousness and sending them away as if they were nothing would have _some_ consequence, but he could never have imagined that they would manifest, on their own, into a carbon-copy of himself. Indeed, Tommy was completely his; their DNA, if tested, would be completely identical. 

But though they complemented each other, that meant that neither was whole without the other. Without the suited man, Tommy was a stuttering, nervous wreck. And without Tommy, the suited man was…

He didn’t like to think about it that much. But over the years, he had made decisions that he had come to regret, and sometimes he wished he could have gone back and prevented himself from pushing his hope away from himself. 

Then again, he mused, as Tommy broke into a soft smile, crouching down with a _Good girl, Sunkist!,_ things would never have turned out this way if he hadn’t. 

And the suited man crouched down too, and hesitantly brought a cold gray hand to the dog’s head, letting Tommy show him exactly where to pet to make the dog happy. 

And maybe things turning out this way hadn’t been too much of a disaster after all. 

* * *

_It was all in his head, it had always been._

It had started at Black Mesa, as most bad things had done. When Gordon had killed Benrey and thought he was gone for good. 

God, he only _wished_. 

In the corner of his vision, he’d see a skeleton. Ducking around corners, peeking back at him when he second-glanced it.

But rather than be a quite direct metaphor for those people he’d killed, however, rather than be the consequences of his actions facing him head-on, it was the opposite. 

It was ironic, in a sense. Benrey was the only life he felt _good_ about ending- and it had been the one that had haunted him, in a very literal sense, ever since. _Rest in peace_ had been an order, not a sentimental statement. 

Nobody else could see the skeleton. Coomer couldn’t, Bubby couldn’t, Tommy couldn’t. He hadn’t asked the G-man directly, but he was pretty sure the guy would have at least had the professional courtesy to say “hey, there’s a skeleton following you around” or something. 

It had been proven to be so very _all-in-his-head_ when the thing had, at one point, pulled out a gun and shot Gordon. The bullets had hit him, and he felt pain, but when he checked, there were no wounds other than what he’d suffered at the hands of the military and the aliens and the lasers and- well- everything else, really. 

As an instinct, his hand crept up to the rough fabric wrist brace on his forearm. He knew he shouldn’t keep it on for so many hours a day, knew it would turn into some physical issues someday- but he couldn’t help it. He panicked without the comforting pressure on his arm. Without the brace to remind him that his hand was attached, he’d check every five minutes, pull on his hand, make sure it was still there.

He supposed it was funny, in some pathetic way. _Look at that guy, what’s he doing?_ He’d gotten stares a lot. He was glad he didn’t go out any more. 

He shook his head, clearing his thoughts. _No, don’t go down that hole, don’t go down that spiral right now._ Now he needed to do one thing, and that was turn on the radiator and sit back on the couch. 

Reluctantly, Gordon sat up, the blanket falling into a ratty heap beside him. He was only twenty-eight, right? He felt like he was _sixty_. Felt like a war veteran, his joints cracking as he stretched. 

He lifted up his foot a bit to step over a dented can, its contents long since drained by a thirst to forget. 

He groped the wall for the light switch, clumsy fingers fumbling it into its _on_ position, before he continued towards the closet. The sudden bright light made him squint, and he put up a hand to his eyes as if he had just stepped outside into the glare of a nuclear bomb. 

All he had to do was push the door closed. Push it closed, and then he could keep going. 

His shoulder pressed against the wall too much. He was relying on it to support himself, stumbling forth the way he did. A diet of only junk food, dehydration, sleep deprivation- probably a combination of all three- made him too dizzy to walk straight. 

Another can interrupted his path. Luckily, he was keeping his head down, face tilted towards the ground to shield himself from the light, and he saw it before he stepped on it. He kicked it aside, not even trusting himself to step over it this time. A dark brown stream splashed out onto the carpet, some hitting his foot, and he cursed under his breath. Apparently it hadn’t been as empty as he thought. 

But he had finally made it to the open closet door. Looking at it now, it wasn’t even open that much- just a crack, ajar. 

What was he worried about? 

He kept his eyes purposely glued to the floor as he put his hand to the door. With all his force, he slammed it shut. 

A sickening, organic _crunch_ came from the jamb. 

Horror overtaking his body, Gordon practically leapt backwards, falling onto his behind with wide eyes. He didn’t even register the spilled beer soaking from the carpet into his sweatpants, the terror was so great. 

“Jesus Christ,” he choked out. But the scene facing him was anything but divine. 

Four fingers made of nothing but off-white _bone_ had grabbed onto the door frame as he’d pushed the door shut. They’d stopped it from closing, gripping the jamb with all the force in the world. He was sure that if the fingers had blood, it would have stopped flowing to them.

“Hey, friend,” came a disembodied voice that came from everywhere and nowhere at once. 

Terrified, Gordon looked around himself, but horribly, knowingly, his gaze was drawn back to the closet door. He sputtered out curses, his throat dry, lips drier, as it slowly opened, showcasing the macabre scene within.

Illuminated by an incandescent glow was a blue orb- no, the bubble itself was glowing, a dark blue colour but giving off white light. Illuminated by its light was the rest of the skeleton, cracked and dusty. Spiderwebs patched up the spaces between its bones, while also tethering it to the wall with arcs tinted by deep ocean blue. 

A tattered rectangular form, made of worn, navy blue leather, was pinned to a rib, with gold embellishment in the symbol of a Greek lambda in a circle. Bile rising in his throat, Gordon recognized Benrey’s signature _passport_. 

“God,” he whined again; and again the visage greeting him was nothing holy. Masses of patchy webs had covered the skeleton’s face to the point where, thick enough to look like skin, they resembled Benrey’s usual gray-blue pallor and sunken cheeks. 

He had to do something. He had to _escape._ He felt trapped. 

But in this moment, he could do nothing. This skeleton was a predator and Gordon was its prey. 

He wheezed, pushing himself backwards with only his left arm. His right arm was clutched to his chest, phantom pain now worse than ever. Was it even phantom at this point? He looked down at his hand, just to make sure it was still there, but his vision was blurry with tears, and he couldn’t make it out. 

Tears, yes. He was crying- _sobbing-_ wails intermixed with a sloppy, slobbering medley of _please-don’t-hurt-me_ s and _go-away_ s. 

“Please- _please!_ ” 

The lights flickered. 

Gordon screamed. 

* * *

A thirty-seven-year-old man with a degree in organic chemistry really should not have the _Paw Patrol_ theme song as his ring-tone. 

But Tommy Coolatta hadn’t ever really cared about what thirty-seven-year-old men with degrees in organic chemistry should or should not be doing. 

Tommy was never the kind of guy to fit right in with what was expected. In fact, he didn’t really _know_ what was expected until he asked, or someone yelled at him to do something different. Tommy was used to doing things _wrong_ , always needing to have things corrected by other people who of course knew better than him. It was like he’d never grown past the age of ten.

And, well, maybe a ten-year-old with a phone would still be a little old for a _Paw Patrol_ ringtone. 

But Tommy didn’t really think about that. He did what made himself happy, seemingly oblivious to the outside world, seemingly in a constant state of bliss. 

“S-sorry,” Tommy prefaced his egress from the room as a man in a gray suit- _his father_ , he reminded himself- raised his eyebrows at the disturbance. “I, uh, only gave this n-number to emergencies, so-” 

Cutting himself off before his father could respond, Tommy raced out of the hallway, leaving Sunkist and the G-man, as he ducked around a doorframe, fishing the phone out of an overly long lab coat pocket. 

“Hi, it’s-”

“TOMMY!” screamed a desperate man on the other side of the line. “Tommy, oh, my _God,_ Tommy…” It continued, though Tommy couldn’t make out the words any more from the sobs, other than his own name and repeated, unanswered pleas to some deity. 

Instantly, he recognized the sobbing voice as Gordon. 

“M-Mister Freeman?” 

He’d only seen Gordon in this state once, and that was after what Tommy had presumed was the most traumatic experience in his- in _anyone’s_ life. To hear the agonized screams taking over Freeman’s voice again, to hear this wail of hopelessness… 

Empathy kicked in like a tsunami, flooding Tommy’s mind with thoughts of pain, of fear. He gasped involuntarily at the shock- the feelings were so intense, he nearly dropped his phone; as it was, he had to grab onto the doorframe to steady himself not to fall over.

But throughout the haze of desperation and incoherent babbling that was Freeman’s mind poured into words, Tommy knew one thing. 

Something _really_ bad must have happened to put Gordon into this condition again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally getting into the meat of the story, and its namesake! Sorry, you'll have to find out what Coomer's secret is next chapter >:3
> 
> (well. find out if you're still reading this by the next time i update)  
> (oh my god, i am /so/ sorry about my lack of schedule. i'll try!! i swear.. qmq)


	4. All the Flowers That Blossom in November

Doctor Coomer had always been a late bloomer. 

Graduating school? Held back many times, though through no fault of Coomer’s own, the high school alumni consisted of one twenty-three-year-old. 

And the college graduation had been even more disjointed: though most of the class’s ages ranged in their mid to late twenties, and perhaps a thirty-year-old wouldn’t have raised eyebrows, _fifty-two_ was the year of Coomer’s first degree. 

It had been a wonder the scientist had been hired by anyone at all. 

But, as all would come to see, and a select few would come to know by heart, Black Mesa had a rather odd hiring policy. 

Human experimentation was the name of the game. And Doctor Coomer, with a rather ironic position title, was the first of many pawns. 

_Doctor_ , even though Coomer was the subject. 

It was a very sterile way to keep things under the radar. Nice and tidy euphemisms, and who would come out the smarter?

Obviously not Coomer. 

The scientist didn’t remember having a stutter before coming to Black Mesa, nor a brain with neurons that fired on and off and caused Coomer’s mind to completely blank out in the middle of conversations, of sentences, of words. 

But then again, the scientist didn’t remember a lot of things before coming to Black Mesa.

Clones took a toll to create. And there had been three hundred of them. 

Pushing those thoughts out of sight, out of mind, Doctor Harriet Philomena Coomer opened her bedroom window.

_Another day, another dollar._

Yes, Harriett. Yes, _her._

As a late bloomer in all else, why wouldn’t it have taken Coomer so long to figure out the matter of identity? 

In the beginning, Coomer had thought it was normal.

Everyone goes through a phase of self-hatred, especially that of one’s body. And so what if Coomer’s was worse than the others, so what if it got to the point where the child had researched ways to transfer one’s own consciousness into other bodies?

Eventually, a consensus had been reached, and Coomer went to therapy. Upon discovering the label of _bisexual_ , and realizing that Coomer did indeed fall under it, everything seemed to be okay. The self-hatred was chalked up to the multiple hold-backs, body image issues classified as dys _morphia_ due to Coomer’s rather pudgy appearance, and all else was shoved under a rather sturdy rug. 

And there it stayed for the majority of adolescence, and eventually, adulthood. Coomer got married, got a job. Things were going surprisingly well, considering the horribly stunted development that had befallen the scientist. 

But then Black Mesa’s human experiments began.

Suddenly, the rug was lifted away, as protective, concealing, repressing memories were stripped from Coomer’s mind. 

And suddenly, confusion rushed in. 

Confusion about identity, first and foremost. 

Paradoxically, the more memories the scientist lost to the experiments, the closer Coomer came to discovering the self. 

Suddenly, the dysphoria- and now Coomer knew it was the right word- came back, in a flood, in unrelenting waves beating at the doors to Coomer’s consciousness. 

Of course the wife couldn’t understand. Didn’t understand why Coomer was so reluctant to get into bed with her any more. Just got mad and yelled and said she’d find someone else who could satisfy her. 

By the time Coomer had the courage to come out to her, she’d been cheating for a year and a half. 

Needless to say, the divorce was not an occasion to shed tears. 

Homeless, now, Coomer’s only option was to live full-time at Black Mesa. But what was _life_ there? It was akin to torture, almost. Day after day, the experiments took more and more of the identity Coomer had worked so hard to find. 

The only solace to the lonesome scientist was a pyrokineticist, a test-tube baby by the name of _Bubby_. But Coomer was scared, now. If coming out to a wife of twenty years was so damaging that it could upturn a whole relationship, what could it do to the first friend the scientist had made in years? Unwilling to ruin something so fragile, Coomer kept the matter of identity under wraps, chafing only slightly as every conversation drove _he/him_ and _Harold_ further into others’ memories. 

Meanwhile, on the side, Coomer slipped into the Research and Development departments from time to time. Cyborg limbs- or as Black Mesa preferred to call them, _cybernetic enhancements_ \- were the hottest thing on the block. And they were just the thing for Coomer. New arms that grew less hair, new legs with more feminine fat distribution- even _sex reassignment surgery_ was possible in the near future, a distant dream no longer. 

And then, the Resonance Cascade. 

Suddenly, all the relationships and facades that Coomer had built up were gone in an instant. 

Amid all the destruction, a door opened. 

It was a way to start over.

With the hush money after the survival-escape, Coomer started a new life. Bought a house (had they always been this expensive? Coomer must have been underground for longer than she thought), got on estrogen, got a legal name change, driver’s license, passport- you name it, the documents were filed within Coomer’s first month aboveground. SRS and other surgeries were waitlisted for. Things were going well.

She’d given her address to the others of the Science Team, sure they would pry too much if she withheld any information that the others gave out on a whim. Plus, how much danger could she possibly be in? They were all scattered across the country, like an equilibrator had diffused them, making sure there was ample space between them all. 

And Harriet P. Coomer was fine with that. 

What she did not expect, however, was Bubby coming to crash. 

She’d shown up to the door completely unaware, sure it was the mailman ringing for a package delivery. And had been caught- dress, makeup, and name plaque on the door- in 4K, as the kids would say. 

But Bubby had been uncharacteristically accepting- _kind,_ even, when it came down to it all. And he _understood._ Bubby _understood_ the plight Coomer found herself in, because _he felt the same_. Bubby himself was intersex, tube-born without genitalia. _Without a ball to my name, my good bitch!,_ in his own words. 

Whiplash for the both of them, to say the least. 

* * *

At the moment, however, they were relatively free from such troubles. Identity was pushed to the side, replaced by morning coffee and the paper. It was eight AM on a Friday, and Coomer and Bubby were video gaming.

Well. _Coomer_ was video gaming. An argument between the merits of _Portal_ and _Super Mario Galaxy_ was quickly settled when it was found that the only game Coomer owned was _Super Punch-Out!!_ for the SNES. Which was, as Bubby was quick to learn, a single-player game.

“Damn,” remarked Bubby simply, watching Coomer’s prowess at the game- so far, the player character had taken no damage, a feat comparable only to tool-assisted speedrunners. He opened his mouth as if to say something more, but no other words came out. 

Coomer grinned. “I’ve been practicing.” While real-life sports were not on the menu, due to a combination of the natal sex issues (and the arguably more disqualifying cybernetically enhanced limbs), Harriet had had no other outlet for her love of boxing except a vintage console, the 1994 _Super Nintendo Entertainment System_. 

Bubby, all sprawled over a leather sofa, watched Coomer take her eyes off the SNES, scanning his gangly- maybe _lanky_ was a better-fitting, more dignified word- form.

“My turn?” asked Bubby hopefully, gesturing to the console as it beeped out the ten-count: another victory for Coomer.

“Not a chance,” she scoffed in response, turning back to the game. “I’m not having you mess up my streak.”

He shrugged, and likewise, turned back to his thoughts, each of the two immersing themselves in a different world.

Bubby’s mind was a maelstrom, a whirlpool, a maze or labyrinth of sorts. Labyrinths and mazes were actually different things, Coomer had informed him once. While a maze had dead ends, a labyrinth had no such thing- it was one meandering path, all compressed into a little square or circle, that eventually ambled into the middle of its shape and let out into the exact same spot from which it began, its exit path a perfect mirror image of its entry. 

Bubby preferred it this way, truthfully. It comforted him that there were no “dead ends” in his mind. He was made to be perfect, and perfect he was. 

But what was at the center of this labyrinth, with which he had occupied himself so often?

He grimaced, not wishing to remember the cold, impassive chip in his head.

Bubby had always known about his own neural implants. It was Black Mesa standard issue, really. As mundane, as everyday as the Silly Straws. A subject grew self-aware, became too powerful to return to its cage, its tube, its homeworld? Stick a chip in it, call it a day. 

Black Mesa’s subjects were, in no uncertain terms of the word, immortal. Impossible to kill. However, they were not immune to being stunned. Frying their neural circuits with the chip would incapacitate a lesser being completely, and for a higher life-form with mental capacity on par or beyond human, it would at the very least make them forgetful, dazed, easy to subdue until the self-healing process completed. 

Bubby’s own had been remarkably forgiving, as the implants went. It had only been triggered against him twice in his memory, both times by the military, which had found the controls and poked around, as the inept bastards were bound to do. The first time, he’d spewed some mess of technological sounds before disappearing and reappearing about ten meters away from where he’d been moments ago. The second time, he’d turned into a car.

But now that Black Mesa was destroyed, along with it should be the control centers for the chips. No more would be manufactured; no more would be stuck into the heads of not-quite-humans; no more would be fried at a moment’s notice, causing the unlucky life a couple worlds of anguish in less than a second. 

Bubby was free of Black Mesa entirely, he thought gladly. Free, too, was Harriet P. Coomer, who, as Bubby watched, scored _another_ flawless victory against the _Super Punch-Out!!_ NPC.

“Perfect run!” Coomer hollered, prompting Bubby to grin, and ask yet again whether it was his turn on the console.

And so it continued, their odd little life in the suburbs of a peaceful Floridian town. So far, it was peaceful- and peaceful, it would stay for now. 

* * *

But about two thousand, five hundred miles away, a different little life was anything but peaceful.

“Talk to me, Mister Freeman!” the thirty-seven-year-old man with a _Paw Patrol_ ringtone begged to the dead, empty receiver of his flip phone. 

But unfortunately for Tommy Coolatta’s nerves, no response, however staticy or scared, met his ears. Not even a scream or a sob transmitted through the lines.

A minute later, the call ended abruptly, with a long, loud _beep_ that was not dissimilar to the sound of a patient flatlining in a hospital bed. 

“Oh, _no,_ ” Tommy whined softly. 

This was bad. This was _worse_ than bad. 

He kept the phone open for the next few minutes, redialing the number every forty-five seconds after the last call inevitably went to voicemail. Eventually, over ten tries later, he forced himself to admit that he wouldn’t get an answer.

Something was very deeply wrong. And Tommy was in the _worst_ place to help anything out. 

He rushed to a banged-up laptop, pulling up the _Contacts_ application. Of all the people he knew, was there anyone who could get to Gordon faster than Tommy? Of course there was. _Anyone_ he knew was closer to Massachusetts. He’d have to book a flight, and that would take _days,_ oh, God, he wouldn’t be able to make it in time if he’d left twelve hours ago. 

Deep breaths, Tommy. He could do this. 

His cursor paused over a certain name on the list.

_Pepper, Darnold. PhD._

_Powerade Consultant / Private Mixologist._

_Bedford, New Hampshire._

_XXX-XXX-XXXX_

Tommy’s throat ran dry. He licked his lips, trying to moisten them, but he was only made painfully aware of his sudden lack of saliva. 

Couldn’t it be anyone else? Was there someone else closer?

_Forzen._

_Student of Veterinary Medicine._

_Université de Montréal FMV, Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec._

_XXX-XXX-XXXX_

No, that wouldn’t work. Quebec was even farther from Gordon than New Hampshire. Plus, Forzen was a college student- would he even have a car? 

The only option left was to call Darnold Pepper. Tommy gulped.

He dialed the number, fingers shaking. _Please don’t pick up._ If it went to voicemail, he’d have an excuse to dial Forzen instead. He’d gladly talk to _any_ number of crazed Quebecois ex-military members rather than a certain mixologist who he’d parted with on bitter terms.

But for Tommy, there was no such solace, no such luck. On the third ring, the ringing abruptly cut off.

“Hello, Tommy,” a cool voice spoke, wasting no time. The crisp static, normally overtaking Tommy’s speakers, drew back from the conversation, as if not wanting to interfere with the icy tension between the two. 

Tommy chewed his lip, hesitant to speak. 

_He wasn’t doing this for himself. He was doing this for Gordon._

“I- I need your help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for making you all wait this long! 
> 
> Well, Coomer's "secret" is revealed to you, the readers, but I'm sure it will be a lot harder to break the news to the rest of the Science Team.
> 
> And, another cliffhanger.. I'm so sorry again!! I promise that at some point these updates will leave on closures of SOME sort... 
> 
> Thank you all for reading!!
> 
> Note from past self about two months ago, when I first started writing this:   
> "elizabeth eden and john wojtowicz as coomer and bubby REAL (not fake!)"


	5. Fleeting as a Ray of Sunshine (The Potion Man)

Darnold cursed at himself as he left work early: half an hour before nine, when his shift would have ended. Family emergency, he’d told the guy at the desk as he left. _Screw_ the fact that he didn’t have a family, neither by paper nor by blood.

Why was _he_ of all people the emergency contact for Gordon Freeman? Couldn’t that blasted man look after himself? 

The first time, he’d been fine with it, even if he was a little shocked. Sure, Gordon could have the potion he’d been working on for the past couple years. Darnold himself wasn’t gonna need it, and Black Mesa, which had commissioned him for it, obviously had bigger things on their plate to worry about. 

So yeah, though Gordon’s little pack of rats- and Tommy- had run rampant over his laboratory, destroyed everything he held to his name, and traumatized him by shooting three men in the head before storming out, Darnold held no real malice towards them.

Yeah, right. That was what he’d thought. 

Turns out that was wrong. Turns out that was Darnold’s, oh, what had they called it? His _Southern hospitality_ that made him just _such_ an agreeable, _such_ a nice person to be around. _Such_ a god damn doormat. 

Was he bitter?

Hell, could he be anything _but?_

Darnold, this. Darnold, that. Darnold, let Bubby crash at your place while he tours the USA. Darnold, be Gordon’s emergency contact. Darnold, go drive an hour to Worcester, Mass, to make sure the guy hasn’t stopped breathing.

He was _so fed up._ If Darnold was a rubber band, being stretched by the demands of the manchildren who refused to leave his life, he would have snapped long, long ago.

But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t say no to that voice. Despite how hard he’d tried to be impassive, how hard his mind had pushed against the pleading tones, he couldn’t help but fall back into the same ruinous pattern as he had always done when it came to Tommy.

God _damn_ it.

The first time he’d met Tommy had never left his mind since. Darnold had been a recent hire to Black Mesa, and he’d been getting shown the “ropes”, so to speak.

Not the ropes as in the barnacles that hung from the ceiling and latched onto you with their long spiked tongues that resembled flypaper wrapped in barbed wire. No, those ropes came after it was too late to leave, after he realized that the job he’d been offered was much more sinister than simply helping run a bar for the scientists, after he had seen much, _much_ more damning things.

He’d been taken to the “laboratory” as the last stop of his tour, converted from a cybernetics department recently before his hire. There were still robotic limbs lying around from the quick departure of the lab’s recent inhabitants after the funding cut; Darnold himself had snuck a pair of jet boots into his locker before the place was completely wiped clean. 

As he had set up his bartending gear, the ventilation system had clattered. He spun around, an Erlenmeyer flask in hand, ready to smash it over the head of whatever was disturbing him. By this time, he’d seen some of the less dangerous creatures of Black Mesa- houndeyes, they’d been called. They were harmless, really, unless provoked, but Darnold was a cat person, and did not have the patience threshold necessary to deal with the beastly dog-parasites without making them mad. Plus, he’d seen them running around, destroying everything in their paths. And Darnold’s gear was one-of-a-kind top-of-the-line stuff. 

But instead of the characteristic wet snuffling of the houndeyes was a wheezy breath, almost asthmatic in nature. Instead of a two-foot-tall dog alien leaping out of the vent to smash Darnold’s setup, a thin, bony hand stretched out, swathed in a baggy lab coat. A collection of bracelets adorned its wrist, some woven thread, some beads, some simply hair bands that had been slipped onto the arm. 

Flask-turned-weapon forgotten, Darnold stepped back and gazed in wonder as a seven-foot-tall man emerged from the ventilation duct.

“S-sorry,” laughed the man nervously, in a high-pitched, weepy tone, running a dusty hand through ruffled, deep brown hair. Though it was buzzed by Black Mesa’s standard protocol- scientists could not have shoulder-length or longer hair, it would interfere with experiments- it had already grown shaggy, especially around the bangs, giving it a spiky yet wavy look. 

Darnold’s mouth hung open. How was it possible for one man to be so _tall?_ He himself was five foot six, a modest height, and yes, while he _was_ a bit under the average, he’d never had to crane his neck quite like this just to look someone in the eyes.

Speaking of eyes, the man’s were a stunning _yellow,_ the colour of the sun, of gold, of dandelions. Innocence and youth sprung from them, making Darnold rethink his assumption that it was a man, rather than a _teenager,_ he was talking to. 

Right. _Talking._ He’d somewhat tuned out the words spoken in favor of his dedicated examination of the man, and blinked rapidly, coming back to the conversation. 

“... I like t-to ride on the, um, the conveyor belts, but uh, t-today they, they got stopped for maintenance, and uh, I had to get off, because they’d yell a-at me if they, uh, they found me.” He smiled again, quite conciliatory in his manner. “Sorry f-for disturbing you. I, uh, I thought that this was unoccupied.”

“I’m new here,” Darnold responded quickly, surprising himself with the confidence with which he spoke. “I just got here yesterday. This is- uh, will be- my lab.” 

“Oh, a lab,” the other said, looking rather disenfranchised. “That’s, uh, that’s… _nice.”_ The tone was so forced, Darnold could practically _feel_ it. Shifting his feet and crossing and uncrossing his arms, he looked like he’d rather be somewhere else. Not _anywhere_ else, mind you, there was not a strong need to get away, but it was as if he’d stumbled upon a high school club that wasn’t for him, and was about to politely ask for the location of the door. 

“No,” Darnold interrupted, feeling as if he’d made the stranger sad. And god, when he looked at those youthful dandelion eyes- Darnold would rather stab himself in the heart than let a single dash of unhappiness cross the other man’s face. He had to say something, _anything,_ to change the feelings in the room. “Not a typical lab! I… am… starting up the Mixology department.” 

It wasn’t even a lie, come to think of it. He hadn’t heard of any _other_ mixologists in Black Mesa, and it wasn’t as if the place had come with one. 

“Mixology!” gasped the other, clapping both hands over his mouth and making a jingly sound with the bracelets. Immediately, the tension dropped away- not even melting, but _subliming_ into thin air. “Is that- does that mean, is that _soda?”_

Darnold scratched his chin thoughtfully. He hadn’t thought of soda much during his degree and informal training at bars here and there; mostly there’d been alcohol involved, rather than sugar. But come to think of it, fizzy champagne and Coca Cola had a family relation or two, right? Seltzer wasn’t too far off from Sprite.

“I mean, it _can_ be.”

The other’s hands dropped from his face, balling up into excited little fists that he clutched to his chest in glee. “Oh, my _God!”_ he squealed joyfully. 

Darnold grinned. “Pleasure to meet you, Mister, uhm. I… don’t know your name.”

“M-My name’s Tommy.” Tommy grinned, showing bright white teeth that were somewhat sharper than normal.

“I’m Darnold, Darnold Pepper.”

“Wait, but you’re a scientist- does, does that make y-you Doctor Pepper?” asked starry-eyed Tommy, looking like a child on his first trip to the candy shop.

Darnold grinned. You know what? Yeah! It did! “Sure does.”

“My last name’s Coolatta!” Dipping a hand into an oversized pocket, large enough to fit a small dog in, Tommy fished around for his ID as proof. Darnold didn’t need to see it to believe it, but the concept of such an absurd surname on a Black Mesa passport was too tempting to look away from.

And sure enough, there it was: _Coolatta, Tommy,_ printed in bold, processed typeface.

And that was when Darnold knew he wanted to be this man’s friend.

Summer days stretched across the horizons, a seemingly endless, frenzied carousel of fun and games. Day after day, they played. Darnold taught Tommy how to mess with the control panels to steal soda from the cafeteria vending machines. Tommy taught Darnold to dodge security while riding the conveyor belts. They fought over silly things like the best flavour of Sprite- and made up within the very same hour.

Life with Tommy was a never-ending carnival, and who was Darnold to deny himself the manic joy of childhood?

With all the sunshine and soda that clouded his mind, it took a while for Darnold to accept that this life was insidiously wrong. 

It was a dark trap that Darnold hadn’t even realized he’d fallen into. He was so smitten with Tommy, he denied any fault the man had, shifted the blame for the constant immaturities onto others or even himself. 

Yes, smitten. Darnold had fallen in love with the sunshine. 

And like the sunshine, it was something he couldn’t look at for too long, or it would burn him. It was something he couldn’t even touch.

And they had made quite the couple, too. They’d called it official, once, after a kiss. Their legs dangling over a pit of water used as reactor coolant, hair mussed gently by an industrial fan, they could almost pretend it was a date in the real world, with a lake and a breeze. 

Captivated, Darnold laid his head on Tommy’s shoulder, smiling softly as he looked up into the long-lashed eyes of the sun. 

An unblinking Tommy gazed back, cheeks the colour of cherry blossoms contrasting his usual deathly-white pallor. A smile of peace, rather than manic joy or soda-fueled ecstasy, crossed his face. 

Utopia _was a word coined,_ Darnold would think, later, as he looked back upon those days, _for a place that could not exist._

First, he’d had to admit that Tommy was a manchild. Quite the literal definition of one. He hadn’t seemed to grow out of a third-grader mindset. And while childish games were fun, skipping his work to play Beyblades grew pretty old, pretty quick, for Darnold.

He’d tried to incorporate his work into the games, to see if it was just a problem that he felt he wasn’t accomplishing anything on those idle days, where five thousand feet below the ground, Tommy’s radiant smile made it feel like he was basking in the warmth and laziness of a summer afternoon. But calling his special drinks _potions_ and joking about new zany flavours of Powerade, after some time, got old, just the same.

No matter what he tried, he felt a growing, gnawing unease at the edge of his consciousness whenever he spoke with Tommy. The more he interaccted with him, the more Darnold realized that Tommy’s wildly changing emotions made him more unstable than a chair with two legs. He whined, not only in tone of voice, but in the very words he used. And Tommy was able to keep this all hidden under a surface of deep knowledge of “adult” things, like OSHA, or organic chemistry. 

For a while, there was anger. Anger at Tommy for being that way, anger at Tommy’s estranged parents for neglecting their child, letting him turn out this way. But mostly, Darnold’s anger was at himself for falling for Tommy. 

He tried to block Tommy out of his mind. Maybe he could forget him, and move on with his life.

But despite it all, even after he called it quits on their dating, and bolted up the ventilation ducts, and even told security to double up on patrol of the conveyor belts closer to his lab, Darnold Pepper was still in love. 

_He couldn’t say no to that voice._

So Darnold found himself as angry now as he was five years ago when he broke up with Tommy. He pushed his foot against the accelerator once, twice, as he sped down the interstate, ready to be the knight in shining armour for Gordon for the second time. 

It wasn’t really for Gordon that he was doing this, though. Of course it wasn't. Freeman hadn't done one thing to ingratiate himself towards Darnold. 

It was for the sunshine man, the man whose eyes glowed like stars when he laughed. The man who, despite _everything,_ Darnold could never forget. Could never stop loving.

It was for Tommy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here you have it, Darnold Pepper to the rescue! 
> 
> Sorry to disappoint, this isn't my regular update schedule. I had this halfway done by the time I posted the last chapter (split them up to keep a consistent word count per chapter), and I had the burst of inspiration at eleven-at-night to finish this. Turns out there was way more stuff about Darnold and Tommy's past than I thought I was gonna write, and the words kinda flowed till I had two thousand of 'em.  
> Anyways, I don't want to get your hopes up, so don't expect the next chapter too soon.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading! <3


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